I've always appreciated the way Arundhati Roy engages with politics armed with a conscience and mind of her own. She offers an approach that I'd love to see more of in Indian discourse.

Mostly very specific to her spacetime, but with some real gems for thought.

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Any government's condemnation of terrorism is only credible if it shows itself to be responsive to persistent reasonable, closely argued, nonviolent dissent.

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There's something pitiable about a people that constantly bemoans its leaders. If they've let us down, it's only because we've allowed them to.

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It's not a clever enough subject to speak of from a public platform, but what I would really love to talk to you about is loss. Loss and losing. Grief, failure, brokenness, numbness, uncertainty, fear, the death of feeling, the death of dreaming. The absolute, relentless, endless, habitual unfairness of the world. What does loss mean to individuals? What does it mean to whole cultures, whole peoples who have learned to live with it as a constant companion?

Indian writer Roy's debut novel, The God of Small Things (1997), met with resounding critical acclaim and won the Booker Prize, but this writer of conscience has turned her attention to the real world ever since, turning herself into an electrifying political essayist. In her third volume of nonfiction, she valiantly addresses questions of power and its abuse, and powerlessness and its transformation via dissent and activism into a force for positive change. Roy dissects her country's violent religious conflicts, celebrates and mourns the seemingly lost legacy of Gandhi, and condemns India's gargantuan and environmentally unsound hydroelectric dam projects and the concomitant displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. She also discusses with invaluable clarity the mess in the Middle East, and presents razor-sharp interpretations of the U.S. government's foreign policy and the insidious influence of mega-corporations. So fluent is her prose, so keen her understanding of global politics, and so resonant her objections to nuclear weapons, assaults against the environment, and the endless suffering of the poor that her essay are as uplifting as they are galvanizing. Donna Seaman

Penetrating views on corporate, military and political nexus exploiting the humanity.

The essays in this collection were written in 2002-2003, and reflect the events of that time. And yet, they also feel entirely relevant 20 years later, which is a disturbing reflection of the realities of global geo-political and economic relationships and how little things have changed for the better in this century.

The first couple of essays focus on internal events in India, and address the rising levels of Hindu nationalism and the neo-fascist tendencies of those who espoused such policies. The discussion of the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat is painfully fresh and searing in its indictment of the political structures that enabled it and gave it cover. The author also points out how America's "War on Terror" also provided cover for such atrocities, and how it rendered non-violent protests ineffective, thus actually driving those with issues that needed to be addressed towards violent means for drawing attention to their needs.

But then the essays shift outward, taking on a more global viewpoint. The author broadens her arguments to discuss the impact of corporate globalization on the "developing" world. According to this analysis, such globalization results in less democracy and less freedom, at least in the so-called developing nations, because such freedoms would allow for local resistance to the changes demanded by the trans-national corporations. These are hard truths to swallow for those of us who live on the other side of the formula. It can be painful to learn that our way of life is built upon a system that actively oppresses others around the world, that we are implicated in this oppression by our quiet acceptance of the status quo. And while the criticisms presented here are now two decades old, a critical review of the current global situation gives no suggestion that things have improved, and certainly indicates that things are possibly worse.

really good, read for a class with Prof. Hobgood.
interesting take on Indian politics written by an Indian woman.

This is a good read if you want to learn more about the nuclear crisis between India and Pakistan

Reading this 13 years after it was published, it almost seems prophetic. The protests may not have stopped the Iraq War, but the American public did call it out for what it was. Its consequence (the rise of ISIS) could be the implosion that Roy predicted. We'll have to see where we go from here. The arguments Roy makes in this book seem less radical and more commonplace in 2016, though that could just be my impression as a liberal, college-educated millennial. In any case, it's a bold and unapologetic statement about some disturbing issues that are too often ignored.

Unfortunately, even more relevant than 20 years ago.

Didn’t agree with everything, but it was really smart

In my journey through Roy’s nonfiction, this 2002-2003 compilation enters the ‘War on Terror’ era leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

Highlights:
-The essay “Come September” considers the zealous fervor post-9/11, where “why do they hate us?” (Bush Jr. answers: “they hate our freedoms”) combined with militaristic nationalism to condemn “anti-Americans”.
-Roy states that she is not anti-national; she is anti-nationalism. She then delivers a “welcome to the world” for those unaware of recent history:
1) Sept 11, 1973: CIA-backed General Pinochet overthrows democratically-elected reformer Salvador Allende in Chile.
2) Sept 11, 1922: British mandate in Palestine (follow-up to 1917 Balfour Declaration).
3) Sept 11, 1990: George Bush Sr.’s speech justifying the Gulf War against Iraq. Roy highlights the history of US/UK support of Saddam’s worst atrocities, and the US’s subsequent bombing and economic terrorism (with the infamous response by liberal feminist hero/war criminal Madeleine K. Albright to half-a-million Iraqi children deaths from sanctions: “we think the price was worth it”).

--For her earlier works, see:
-on India’s nuclear weapons: The Cost of Living
-on India’s mega dam displacements: The Greater Common Good
-on fascistic Hindu nationalism: The Algebra of Infinite Justice

--For later works:
-on India's jobless growth: Capitalism: A Ghost Story
-on India's Maoists: Walking with the Comrades

Also found on: http://newsnotfitforprint.com/2013/05...

My most recent find at Westsider Books was a copy of “War Talk” by Arundhati Roy. The title and blurb sounded interesting so I picked it up. I also thought that since this book was written by not only a woman, but a woman from India that it would be valuable to expand upon the typical male and American voices and perspectives. Roy is the author of “The God of Small Things”, which I haven’t read but was popular several years ago. I will say from the beginning that I would strongly recommend “War Talk” to anyone interested in discussions of violence, particularly state led violence. Again, it is also very interesting as many of the issues discussed are specific to India; issues not often shown in U.S. media.

For example, Roy discusses inter-communal violence in India between Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims. She writes about a 2002 pogrom in Gujarat led by Hindu nationalists against Muslims. A pogrom that left at least 800 dead and thousands displaced (page 19). Or consider: “In 1984, following the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the Congress Party presided over the massacre of three thousand Sikhs in Delhi, every bit as macabre as the one in Gujarat (page 27).” In Roy’s words: “The more the two sides [Hindus and Muslims] try and call attention to their religious differences by slaughtering each other, the less there is to distinguish them from one another. They worship at the same alter. They’re both apostles of the same murderous god, whoever he is.”

Roy writes also to expose the stupidity of America’s “War on Terror”, the ridiculous justifications for the Iraq War, and the rise of right wing politics and parties in India in the early 2000s. One theme throughout is the hypocrisy of world policeman America (along with lapdog Britain), and the never ending violence it commits against the rest of the world. Consider from page 30: “Let’s all suffer forever. Let’s buy expensive guns and explosives to kill each other with. Let the British arms dealers and the American weapons manufacturers grow fat on our spilled blood. We could ask the Carlyle group-of which the Bush and bin Laden families were both shareholders-for a bulk discount.” Or from page 6: “Tony Blair’s “peace” mission a few months ago was actually a business trip to discuss a one-billion pound deal (and don’t forget the kickbacks, O Best Beloved) to sell sixty-six Hawk fighter-bombers to India. Roughly, for the price of a single Hawk bomber, the government could provide one and a half million people with clean drinking water for life.” These quotes speak for themselves.

While reading works by good authors, I am often reminded that powerful thoughts have already been articulated, and most likely, better than I could articulate them. Take for example this quote from page 44: “Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s minds and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.” There is not doubt in my mind that patriotism and nationalism are the most effective tools government’s have to convince their populations that we are good, and the rest is evil. The only logical outcome of such thinking is flag draped coffins full of dead young men and women. Working against this “shrink-wrapping” is of paramount importance. It is essential not to fall into an us and them mentality but to recognize that it is the same forces that oppress the disenfranchised throughout the world.

I will leave on what I think is a very powerful quote and a quote that expresses perfectly the absurd justifications for violence one hears non-stop in mainstream media outlets and out of the mouths of government apologists. “Yet, each person who has lost a loved one surely knows, secretly, deeply, that no war, no act of revenge, no daisy-cutters dropped on someone else’s loved ones or someone else’s children will blunt the edges of their pain or bring their own loved ones back. War cannot avenge those who have died. War is only a brutal desecration of their memory (page 52).”